At the October 27 General Election in Japan, Japanese voters spoke loud and clear: they are fed up with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Barely a month after Shigeru Ishiba was elected to succeed Fumio Kishida as Japan’s 102nd prime minister, his LDP -Komeito ruling coalition suffered the biggest election defeat since 2009. With the LDP-Komeito ruling coalition coming short of 20 seats from a majority, Ishiba needs to find a way forward in order to keep the LDP-Komeito coalition in power before the Diet meets to elect the new prime minister on November 11.

Many questioned Ishiba’s decision to go for a snap election when he dissolved the Lower House merely a week after he was elected to succeed Kishida. Skeptics had good reasons to question his judgment. First of all, Ishiba’s approval rating at the start of his administration— often when any cabinet enjoys the highest public approval rating—was lukewarm at best with barely over 50%. While some argued that the approval for the government has doubled compared to the time of Kishida’s departure, it was still among the worst approval ratings for a new cabinet in the last 2 decades. Furthermore, Ishiba made little effort to reach out to those LDP Diet members who did not support him in the LDP presidential election after his election. His cabinet and sub-cabinet level appointments explicitly favored those who supported him , while marginalizing those who supported other candidates, particularly Sanae Takaichi. His move alienated those who supported Takichi–most of whom were staunch Abe supporters—whose presence within the LDP has been substantial. Some argued that it does not have much impact Ishiba was expected to decide against many of Takaichi’s major supporters for the election due to their suspected involvement in political funds scandal, forcing them to run as non-affiliated. However, others argued that these moves would further alienate the voters who supported former prime minister Abe, who might decide against going to vote at all, costing them the votes LDP would not be able to afford to lose.

Furthermore, the political climate surrounding the LDP leading up to the Lower House election did not favor the LDP to begin with. The voters had already been upset with a prolonged period of sluggish economy even as the country was supposed to pull itself out of the COVID -19 pandemic, which has been aggravated by both inflation and weak yen which resulted in price hikes across the board. LDP’s inability to shake off its financial scandals and the lack of accountability further deepened voters’ frustrations. To put it mildly, Ishiba led his party (and its coalition partner Komeito) into an election to face deeply disappointed voters while his own party remained fractured.

Still, no one had expected the ruling coalition to lose this badly. LDP lost a whopping 56 seats in this election. With the loss of 8 seats by Komeito which included the loss of its own party leader, the ruling coalition lost 64 seats in total . Usually when the number of seats lost by a political party is fairly small, these can be made up by dishing out “post-election endorsements” to the candidates who are either former or current members of the party who ran for the office without any party endorsements. In the case of this election, however, the number of candidates who could be brought back into LDP in this manner is only 18—hardly enough to make up for the loss. This forces Ishiba to look outside the ruling coalition for a new ally to forge a loose coalition for his party to stay in power.

However, such a maneuver is easier said than done. The political parties just came out of the intense campaigns that are often hostile in all the districts across Japan. So soon after the election, it takes a very skillful politician to reach out to the leaders of the opposition parties against whom he/she just fought while not causing fissures within his/her own party. Ishiba simply does not have such skill, especially when he also needs to worry about not only his own party but also how Komeito might react to such an idea. In addition, such a desperate attempt to look for an ally outside the ruling coalition inevitably comes with a cost: because the LDP needs those outside the coalition more than the other way around, the LDP will likely be forced to make compromises on a wide range of policy issues.

Ishiba has reportedly been intensifying its overtures to the National Democratic Party (NDP, Kokumin Minshu-to)a right-of-the-center minority party that quadrupled its seats in the lower house (from 7 prior to the election to 28 after). However, NDP’s leader Tamaki already indicated that his party would only cooperate with the LDP on a case -by-case basis, flatly dismissing the prospect of his party becoming the second coalition partner. That is hardly a reliable prospect for Ishiba to stay in power.

Given these circumstances, all eyes are now on November 11 when the Diet go back to the Special Session to elect a new prime minister. Since the LDP-Komeito lack a majority vote, and all the opposition parties decide to cast their vote for their own leader at least for the first round, it is widely expected that there will be a run-off between Ishiba against former prime minister Yoshihiko Noda, the current leader of Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (Rikken Minshu-to). It is up to anybody’s guess who will emerge out of the second round as the next prime minister of Japan.

Back in 1989, when the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lost the majority of the majority seats to the then-leading opposition the Social Democratic Party of Japan (SDPJ) in the Upper House election, then-SDPJ chairwoman Takako Doi described the election result as “the mountain has moved.” Even though the 1989 election did not immediately result in a change of the government—the fall of LDP from power would have to wait another 4 years—it certainly triggered the political wave in Japan to get away from a near one-party dominance by the Liberal Democratic Party. The election on October 27 might have “moved the mountain” once again, paving the way toward a much greater change in Japanese politics. That means, however, Japan may return to an era of a revolving door of prime ministers in the meantime, inserting a great deal of uncertainty on Japan’s policy trajectories that the late former prime minister Abe had set for Japan over a decade ago.